Downtown Beaumont restaurant, The Cafe, will close

Dan Wallac, Beaumont Enterprise

By Dan Wallach

Published 9:14 am, Friday, August 15, 2014

Guests enjoy lunch and conversation at the Cafe in downtown Beaumont on Thursday. The Cafe is expected to close by the end of the month.
Photo taken Thursday, August 14, 2014
Guiseppe Barranco/@spotnewsshooter
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco, Photo Editor

Guests enjoy lunch and conversation at the Cafe in downtown...

Scott Whitman talks about his time visiting the Cafe in downtown Beaumont and when the restaurant was the Quality Cafe many years ago. The Cafe is expected to close by the end of the month.
Photo taken Thursday, August 14, 2014
Guiseppe Barranco/@spotnewsshooter
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco, Photo Editor

Scott Whitman talks about his time visiting the Cafe in downtown...

Guests enjoy lunch and conversation at the Cafe in downtown Beaumont on Thursday. The Cafe is expected to close by the end of the month.
Photo taken Thursday, August 14, 2014
Guiseppe Barranco/@spotnewsshooter
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco, Photo Editor

Guests enjoy lunch and conversation at the Cafe in downtown...

Vintage photos of Beaumont hang on the wall at the Cafe in downtown Beaumont Thursday. The Cafe is expected to close by the end of the month.
Photo taken Thursday, August 14, 2014
Guiseppe Barranco/@spotnewsshooter
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco, Photo Editor

Vintage photos of Beaumont hang on the wall at the Cafe in downtown...

Leah Warren serves two pasta plates at the Cafe in downtown Beaumont on Thursday. The Cafe is expected to close by the end of the month.
Photo taken Thursday, August 14, 2014
Guiseppe Barranco/@spotnewsshooter
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco, Photo Editor

Leah Warren serves two pasta plates at the Cafe in downtown...

Guests enjoy lunch and conversation at the Cafe in downtown Beaumont. The Cafe is expected to close by the end of the month.
Photo taken Thursday, August 14, 2014
Guiseppe Barranco/@spotnewsshooter
Photo: Guiseppe Barranco, Photo Editor

Local lore put Bonnie and Clyde in the Quality Cafe, 730 Liberty St., buying sandwiches for a road trip in 1934 that would lead them to Bienville Parish, La., and into a police ambush.

Word has it a bag of sandwiches was found in their bullet-riddled car, said Cheri Parigi, who is the owner of The Cafe, successor to the Quality, the name by which almost everyone still knows the place.

Neither Bonnie nor Clyde were regulars.

But Will Crenshaw is. And Crenshaw, president of Modern Manufacturing Group, is sad, like so many others that The Cafe is closing.

"I've been coming here for 50 years," he said. "Back when it was Battista Girolamo's."

Girolamo, a Sicilian native who came to Beaumont as a boy, scraped together $800 in 1930 with his brother to buy the place that started out as Pete's Place, named for founder Panayotis "Pete" Changos, also known as Big Nose Pete.

Girolamo happily ran the place until he sold the business in 1983 to Sam and Helen Danna, who kept the dishes rattling until Hurricane Rita in 2005 brought the house down, literally. The roof caved in.

Sam and Helen's daughter, Cheri - pronounced Cherry - revived it five years after Rita as The Cafe because her brother Leo, whose name is on a very popular salad dressing, convinced her the establishment needed a name change.

"It's not the Quality," she said he told her. "It's different."

Not wanting to part with all of the legacy, Parigi clipped the name to The Cafe.

Name changes are hard on the customers, especially when they see a giant white porcelain sign with green letters that say, "Quality Cafe" above the counter.

Scott Whitman, who recently returned from 25 years in Houston, waited expectantly for his plate of spaghetti and meatballs, the Thursday specialty. Whitman said he dined at the Quality regularly as a younger man when he worked at Butch Hoffer's, yet another downtown business that closed more than a year ago.

Hoffer's had moved to Parkdale Mall years ago and Butch's son, Lewis, said he decided to close because it was time and none of the younger Hoffers were interested in the family business.

Parigi also had decided it was time. And none of the younger Parigis held any interest in working at The Cafe, either, she said.

Parigi's parents, Sam, 92, and Helen, about to turn 88, were delighted to keep Girolamo as "bus boy" and "maitre d" even after he sold the business to them because it was such a lovable and busy place.